Art of Dying Conversation Presents Holly Pruett on Mar 28

Holly Pruett, Life-Cycle Celebrant, Home Funeral Guide, and conversation leader will speak at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, Oregon Tuesday, March 28th, 2017 from 3-5pm. Holly will focus on Green Burials. Admission for the Hoffman Center is $5 along with a requested honorarium of $5 for Holly.

Holly will discuss Natural (Green) Burials to explore how our deaths can reflect the environmental values we at our beautiful coast strive to practice in our daily lives. We love our coastal lands—our trees and our water and are in an inquiry as to how to die as naturally as we wish to live. This will be an early coastal celebration of Earth Day.

When asked why natural burial is becoming a rich topic for consideration, the River View Cemetery in Portland, where natural burial and funeral options are available, notes:

“There are several reasons: the desire to have a simpler, environmentally-friendly burial; and the desire to return to the earth as quickly as possible, without unnatural barriers such as embalming, sealed metal caskets, or steel-reinforced concrete burial vaults.”

Holly, an interfaith minister, is a much sought-after consultant and Life-Cycle Celebrant who brings people together to help prepare for, live with, and talk about death. A facilitator with Oregon Humanities’ Talking About Dying program, she led the successful 500 person Death: OK, Let’s Talk About It conference in Portland in 2015. Since early 2013 she has served as principal organizer of PDX Death Café, the largest across 30+ countries. She founded the Death Talk Project to foster useful honest conversation about how we die, how we mourn, and how we care for and remember our dead.

With a Master’s degree from the Leadership Institute of Seattle, Holly is in her 4th year of study with Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, author of Die Wise; A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, at his Orphan Wisdom School in Canada. She is certified in Thanatology: Death, Dying & Bereavement by the Association for Death Education & Counseling.

“At the heart of it and with all the stellar credentials, Holly is one of the most capable, personable, and sweetest women I know. She is truly called to this work and we are pleased to welcome her to our coastal home.”

— Claudia Johnson, M.A., Ecumenical Minister and Memorial Officiant

The Art of Aging/Dying Series is a program of the Hoffman Center for the Arts and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) For further information contact Claudia Johnson, claudiaejohnson@gmail.com.